Untangling “which” and “that”

One of the things I learned in my 10 years of teaching grammar to undergraduates is that “it” is torture.

For anyone paying attention that “it” is a lovely little nightmare known as an unclear pronoun reference. Am I saying that teaching grammar is torture or that learning grammar is torture? I left it confusing for effect, and because on any given day, it’s up for grabs.

While, it is true that occasionally teaching is not fun, what I am referring to with that pronoun is learning grammar. Learning grammar, especially if you are doing it when you are older than middle school, is largely misery. And one of the primary sources for that misery is the ever-changing and oft loosely applied rules for certain elements of a sentence. One such monster? The relative pronoun.

Okay. Back to the point: Relative pronouns offer people struggling with grammar a special little brand of torture. At the top of the misery pyramid is trying to determine whether to use “who” or “whom,” but a close second is the confusion between “which” and “that.” Now, The Tongue Untied is willing to acknowledge that for, oh let’s say a half a millennium, people have used the two interchangeably, but we are not willing to admit that they are right.

We have rules here, and the one governing the use of “which” and “that” is as follows: Use “that” for introducing restrictive clauses and “which” for introducing non-restrictive clauses.

ARGH! Another grammar term. If you don’t know what a clause is, learn it here, but for the sake of moving this along, here’s a short primer. A clause has a subject and a verb.

The clauses using relative pronouns (i.e. who, whom, that, which) are dependent clauses. They need another clauses (usually an independent clause) to function. And the relative pronoun in the dependent clause is referring to a noun in the independent clause.

The man whom they arrested was innocent. “whom” relates to (see how we get “relative”?) the “man.”

Okay. When the information in that dependent clause is essential (restrictive) to the meaning of the sentence (and we are not talking about people) then we use “that.”

The hot dog that Ethan ate was spoiled. (we need that next clause to know just exactly what hot dog we are talking about.)

When the information in the dependent clause is not essential (non-restrictive) to the meaning of the sentence (and we are not talking about people), then we use “which.”

Your new haircut, which is the best one you have had in years, makes you look like a movie star.

Learn the rule and you have averted yet another grammar disaster. Fail to and you have missed an opportunity to feel superior.

Microsoft Word’s grammar checker can even help. It knows that “which” belongs with a non-restrictive element and that non-restrictive clauses should be confined by commas.

So the program attempts to correct sentences using commas with which and no commas with that. It’s sort of helpful. But you still need a working knowledge of whether the clause you are using is or is not restrictive! Study up.

‘Now, The Tongue Untied is willing to acknowledge that for, oh let’s say a half a millennium, people have used the two interchangeably, but we are not willing to admit that they are right.’

Please enlighten me, I’m confused. If, given the abundant evidence of native speakers from lords to labourers using both ‘which’ and ‘that’ in restrictive relative clauses (and just ‘which’ in non-restrictive clauses) over several centuries, you still are not willing to admit they are ‘right’, then could you please explain what grounds you have for not doing so?
I thought it might be to maintain the distinction between restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses,but of course they can be easily told apart anyway: in speech,the two types of clause have differing intonation patterns and there is a slight pause before the non-restrictive clause; in writing,a comma is placed before a non-restrictive clause.So there’s certainly no additional requirement to distinguish between the two clauses.I’m sure you’re not asking people to follow an invented rule just for the sake of it, so why is it necessary?